Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice by Ron Goulart Read Free Book Online

She shot up out of her chair, then swayed slightly. “I didn’t even go to my fucking job today. I think I’ve got some kind of bug.”
    “There’s a lot of it going around.”
    Lana pressed a thin hand against her flat front and went shuffling into the kitchen of her small beachside cottage. “Didn’t Phil tell you about my problem?” she called from the dark kitchen.
    “I never met him.”
    “Problems, plural, I should say. Funny-looking and flat-chested,” she called out. “And a drunk.”
    Easy stayed on the swayback sofa. The wind howled down this close to the ocean, howled and rattled the little brown-shingle cottage. Shutters flapped and creaked, bushes and high weeds scraped at the outside walls.
    “Here, Hawkshaw.” Lana was in the kitchen doorway. She flung a complete six-pack of Lucky Lager beer in his direction.
    The six-pack hit the round claw-footed coffee table in front of him. One can broke free of the plastic, opened itself and spurted malty foam up into a laundry basket full of dirty sheets sitting on the room’s other chair.
    “Got a paper towel?” Easy asked as he jumped away clear of the spewing can.
    “Leave it lie,” said Lana. “Cleaning woman’s coming in tomorrow or the next day. There’s still five good ones left, aren’t there? Come on, sit down and drink up.”
    The opened can ceased to foam. Easy selected another one. When Phil Moseson’s sister was back in her chair, a fresh drink resting between her wide-spread legs, he walked near her. “Do you know this girl?”
    “Open your beer, asshole,” suggested the frail woman. “Then we can talk.” She wouldn’t touch the photo of Joanna he held out to her.
    Easy popped the top, took a sip. “Okay, cheers. Now, look at this girl.”
    After taking a long drink of her manhattan, Lana said, “Sure, I know her. She’s the bitch who gave Phil the terrific ideas that got him killed.”
    “How do you mean?”
    Snatching the photo, Lana said, “Look at her, a dumb cunt. A lousy dumb cunt, but you’d pick her over me, too, wouldn’t you?”
    “I don’t have to make a choice,” said Easy. “Have you seen her since your brother died?”
    “I never saw her,” answered Lana. “He showed me pictures. He thought she was hot shit.”
    “What sort of ideas did she give your brother?”
    “You’re different from the regular cops,” she said, blinking up at his face. “You’re a lot better looking, for one thing. You don’t seem like such a turd.”
    “I don’t work for as many people.” He returned to the sofa. “Is there something you didn’t tell the cops?”
    “There’s a whole shitpot I didn’t tell them,” said Moseson’s sister. “Phil was my kid brother, you know. I’m … I’m a few years older than he. There’s no reason I should tell the fuzz what an asshole that bitch made of him.”
    “What did she do?”
    Lana pursed her small mouth, watching the huge radio for a moment. “Did it ever occur to you most of the people in this stupid country are either running away or thinking about running away? It’s the national pasttime, not facing reality. One thing I take pride in, I’ve learned to face reality. I’m a skinny unattractive old bitch and I’m stuck with me.”
    “The girl wanted your brother to run away with her?”
    Lana finished her manhattan and poked a stained finger at the bright cherries in the bottom of the glass. “She filled him up with a lot of romantic bullshit. She got him really turned around with it. They were going to run away together, just the two of them, and start a new and wonderful life somewhere else. Very Utopian.” She chuckled, biting at the rim of her glass. “I told him what she’d do to him.”
    “Kill him?”
    “Her kind of cunt never kills you outright. I told Phil right now she might be slipping around on her husband to see him. Eventually she’d be slipping around on him and screwing the next guy in line. You can’t ever change a woman like that